Northpoint360 is changing the face of real estate

Sitting in the remodeled sales floor of the ReMax Ready business in Conshohocken are L-R Matt Mittman, Robert Schuck of Northpoint Real Estate and Eric Rehling June 17, 2013. Photo by Gene Walsh / Times Herald Staff

CONSHOHOCKEN — McDonald’s has the golden arches and Starbucks has the twin-tailed mermaid.

Now Robert Schuck, Jr. is hoping he hit a red hot bulls-eye — another iconic symbol we all know and love — with his bright orange “n.”

The founder and president of Northpoint360 culled the first letter of his business’ name and created the visual cue to symbolize his fresh take on the way the art of real estate is conducted in a fast-track world.

“My hope is that the orange ‘n’ will become something people will recognize without even having to say Northpoint,” Schuck said. “Like, when people see the blue balloon they think of RE/MAX.”

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These days the orange ‘n’ and the blue balloon have actually formed a partnership beyond Northpoint360’s Wayne headquarters, in the spiffy new Conshohocken office of RE/MAX Ready Real Estate.

When RE/MAX owners Matt Mittman and Eric Rehling — who happened to be boyhood buddies of Schuck’s when they were all growing up in Lower Gwynedd — got a peep at Schuck’s streamlined storefront setup in Wayne, they decided to relocate from their second floor location on Hector Street to a street-level operation on Fayette Street last spring.

In the process, Schuck was happy to add his Northpoint Lending and Northpoint Insurance stamps, leaving the real estate segment back in Wayne so as not to compete with his friends on their own turf.

“They sell the real estate and we provide the lending and insurance,” Schuck said.

Real estate was the last piece of the Northpoint360 puzzle to fall into place in 2011, preceded by insurance in 2009 and mortgage lending a year later.

“I knew I eventually wanted to have the title services and lending all in one place, like one-stop shopping,” Schuck said. “Being in the mortgage industry for 10 years prior to that I knew I wanted to open up something that was different, so I came up with the Northpoint360 idea.”

Schuck built his new real estate model on a prototype established by Prudential, Fox & Roach a few years back, refining the contours and sleeking up the edges, much like those-second generation Corvettes of the 1960s.

With its flat-screen TVs and minimalist décor, the crisp, contemporary sensibility reflects the way that technology and competition have remodeled the industry itself.

“Most of the real estate offices I’ve been to in my life are old houses that have been converted … massive offices that have a million agents going all over the place,” Schuck said. “When you walk into our office you’re not going to see 200 plus agents. When the market turned, other realtors were closing down these big offices they needed to get out of because they had all this rental office space they didn’t need since they weren’t performing to capacity. When you look at all the car dealerships in the area,” he added, “they’re all remodeling their showrooms now. Everything needs to reboot every once in a while.”

The uncluttered, supremely functional environment he designed wholly suits the newer crop of agents, Schuck allowed.

“A lot of agents work from home, because the technology is there for them to do that now. When you meet a client you can come to our storefront, hook up your laptop to a flat screen and go over the agreement of sale on a 42-inch plasma TV. Because it’s more streamlined, it makes the process better, and while you’re doing it you keep the cost down. I can pay our salesperson more because I don’t have the overhead that another office would have.”

Broker and owner Dave Wyher is already operating the first Northpoint Real Estate franchise at the Wayne office.

“I see the industry moving more to a work-from-home thing, but having these storefront locations set up in Wayne, Conshohocken, Ambler, West Chester, right in the heart of things … you go and meet your clients there and most of the work is done on the road.”

While the time-honored pursuit of buying and selling homes remains constant and unvarying, the delivery system is clearly primed for tweaking, according to Schuck.